MUHANGA Correctional Facility has significantly transformed lives of Female convicts

When you visit Muhanga Prison you find the huge compound woman inmates in activities. With beauty shaved heads and clean uniform, every inmate seemed busy.

The inmates chat to one another and cracks jokes like anywhere else, none was handcuffed or being followed around with fire arm.

As I walked around the facility compound, dancing troupes, carpenters, weaves and tailors went on busy on doing their routine works.

Uwimana who has so far served for eighteen years of imprisonment, she believes that her country still considers them as vital to the community as they’re not abandoning:

“We feel that we are still a part of our country and still children of Rwanda. A person feels like they can start up a new life easily after here. I can assure you, even those not behind bars will get to see that we were not just tied in one place but rather active, because our country doesn’t imprison but it corrects,” Uwimana says.

Uwimana further said the inmates are divided into groups depending on their technical skills such as bed sheets designers, table cloths, table mats, trays, jewelry boxes and hand bags among others.

Pascazia Nyirategekimana has served nine years out of thirty years of her sentence. She says the activities like weaving have elevated her thinking capacity and she at least got a peace of mind. “Weaving helps to avoid depression we have spent our imprisonment busy than before. I don’t get lonely I have friends my fellow inmates,” Nyirategekimana says.